Song Jian is, frankly, bored.

Her hair's cropped a couple inches from her head. She's got a backpack full of what she'll need. (She's not tall, and she's not fat, and that buys her leeway.)

She knows Mandarin, English, half a dozen other languages. But she's not going language track. Creative writing for her. She intends to write in Basque, piss off future generations who want her spells. (Of course they'll want her spells. She's a genius.)

Her family's not worth mentioning. The Beijing Enclave took her in because she saved Xu Lao's life and his mother is hot shit. She accepted graciously and hasn't yet made them regret it. The real enclave girls don't like her much, but they don't hate her either. But if she wants to team up with them on the inside, she'll have to bow and scrape and carry an extra five kilos of crap, and she'd frankly rather scratch her own eyes out. She's got the weight allowance to spare; she doesn't have the patience.

She and Lao are an enclave of their own.

Her backpack does have some of the usual supplies, but most of what it has is a tight-woven wire cage full of mice. She learned early that she was good at draining. At taking a living thing and taking what made it live and making it hers. Bending the roiling, hateful energy to her whims.

She also learned that it would rot her from the inside. Make her stupid. Make everyone hate her.

She doesn't mind people hating her. She can take rotting from the inside, if she survives it. But she will not be stupid.

She will ration herself. With Lao's help, she can do it. Her affinity makes it easy, and it gives her a little resilience to the usual effects. The physical ones, at least.

One of the enclave girls is sniffling. Jian gives Lao a look.